Monthly Report - August 2026

Previous Post | Thursday, 20 August 2026 | Reading time: 5 minutes |

Animation on Android and new Transform Tool and Color Sampler features? Read on for a look at development news and the Krita-Artists forum's featured artwork from last month.

Development Report

Krita 5.3.3 Released

Krita 5.3.3 was released with various fixes as well as revamped Android supporter donations.

Developments in Krita Plus

Animation rendering on Android is now possible, via MediaEncoder and LibAV. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)

Support for the XCF file format native to GIMP has been removed, as the xcftools library that was used is long outdated and unmaintained. It's recommended to instead use GIMP to load XCF, and use the OpenRaster (.ora) interchange format for exchanging files between programs. (change)

Some font-related crashes at startup have been fixed. (bug; change 1, change 2 by Wolthera van Hövell)

The new menu options on Android for interface scaling and supporter options not appearing if toolbars had previously been customized has been fixed. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)

A crash when redoing joining and then deleting paths with the Edit Shapes tool has been fixed (bug; change by Elena Sagalaeva), as well as deleting subpaths deleting the wrong ones due to shifted indices (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft). Additionally, path segments can now be deselected with Shift-click (change by Luna Lovecraft).

Developments in Krita Next

The Transform Tool's Liquify mode has a new mode. "Restore Shape" undoes previous distortions while keeping the new position of a shape, and optionally keeping the rotation, scale, and stretch. (change by Moritz Staudinger)

Using the Transform Tool to rotate, distort, and move a triangle, then using Restore Shape to remove the distortions while keeping the new rotation, position, and scale.

The Color Sampler can now show a zoomed in preview in order to precisely pick a pixel, when using the circle color preview. This "Zoom Preview (Pixel-Perfect Color Sampler)" option is in preferences under General->Cursor alongside the option to switch between the circle and rectangle preview. (change by Đạt Lê)

Using the zoomed color sampler preview to pick Kiki's eye color from the Krita 5.3/6.0 splash artwork without zooming in on the entire image.

Various HDR metadata can now be saved into .kra files and viewed in Image Properties. This HDR metadata will also be used when rendering animations. (change by Wolthera van Hövell)

Community Report

July 2026 Monthly Art Challenge Results

The winner of the "An Imaginary Friend" challenge is…

Join This Month's Art Challenge!

For August's Kiki-focused theme, last month's winner has chosen "Kiki's Epic Adventure". The optional challenge is to create separate assets for textures or repetitive elements and paste them into the scene. Build up Kiki's story and take us on a dramatic adventure!

Featured Artwork

This month's featured forum artwork, as voted in the Best of Krita-Artists - June/July 2026:

Askevold's Norwegian Fjord study by maleficmax

Nominate and Vote For Next Month's Featured Artwork!

Participate in next month's nominations and voting to voice your opinion on the Best of Krita-Artists - July/August 2026.

Krita is Free - But You Can Contribute!

Krita is free to use and modify, but it can only exist with the contributions of the community. A small sponsored team alongside volunteer programmers, artists, writers, testers, translators, and more from across the world keep development going.

If this software has value to you, consider donating to the Krita Development Fund. Or Get Involved and put your skills to use making Krita and its community better!

Krita's mascot Kiki putting money in a piggy bank

Additional Changes

Krita Plus (Stable, 5.3.4/6.0.4-prealpha):

Text Tool: Fix a crash when using the SVG text editor's editing actions (Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste). (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)
Wide Gamut Color Selector: Fix color preview popup appearing in the wrong place and not disppearing when the docker is borrowed into the Pop-up Palette or toolbar Docker Box. (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)
Filters: Fix the Color Adjustment filter dialog's curve point controls not working until switching channels. (change by Moritz Staudinger)
Assistant Tool: Fix toggling show/hide assistants not taking effect until the canvas is interacted with. (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)
File Formats: Don't show data loss warnings when exporting, since it doesn't affect the original file, and don't warn about inability to save selections, since they are expected to be temporary. (change 1, change 2, by Carsten Hartenfels)
General: Add icons for convert, selection modifier, and close actions. (change 1, change 2, change 3, by Arkady Flury)
Python Plugins: Comics Manager: Fix a huge memory leak on export, partially re-add exporting vector panels and text, and other small fixes. (bug; change by Wolthera van Hövell)

Krita Next (Unstable, 5.4.0/6.1.0-prealpha):

Color Management: Set default display rendering intent to RelativeColorimetric. (change by Dmitry Kazakov)
Assistant Tool: Show assistants' custom colors at the bottom of their editors to distinguish them. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)
General: Add an option to show or hide icons in menus, or keep the platform default, in preferences under General->Window. (change by Timothée Giet)
General: Add icons for 10 brushes and 10 scripts actions, and add an action for Ten Scripts. (change by Arkady Flury)

Nightly Builds

These pre-release versions of Krita are built every day.

Note that there are currently no Qt6 builds for Android.

Get the latest bugfixes in Stable Krita Plus (5.3.4/6.0.4 prealpha): Linux Qt6 Qt5 — Windows Qt6 Qt5 — macOS Qt6 Qt5 — Android arm64 Qt5 – Android arm32 Qt5 – Android x86_64 Qt5

Or test out the latest Experimental features in Krita Next (5.4.0/6.1.0-prealpha). Feedback and bug reports are appreciated!: Linux Qt6 Qt5 — Windows Qt6 Qt5 — macOS Qt6 Qt5 — Android arm64 Qt5 – Android arm32 Qt5 – Android x86_64 Qt5